The First Step in Creating Ultimate Value

Dreams are not just Fantasy

Remember good old Walter Mitty? Walter escapes his dreary reality as a hen pecked husband by retreating into a wild fantasy world. In that fantasy world, he is the hero who saves the day. He does the impossible on a regular basis. But Walter’s pleasures are confined to moments when he can walk away from reality and live in his dream world. He is only free when reality does not interfere. And when it does, Walter is doomed to mediocrity.

There is something really great about this story, and something not so great. The not so great thing —- one might draw the conclusion that dreaming of ultimate value is just fantasy. The real world would never enable us to achieve anything near that kind of success. And the really great thing? Mitty demonstrates, that we are capable of seeing ultimate value. We see it and we are attracted to it. All of us, even good old hen pecked Walter. We may have difficulty realizing our dreams, but we are free to have those dreams.

So, can we hope to level up in order to realize our dreams? To achieve stuff that seems impossible, and that when realized, produces huge value for us, and for everyone around us? The answer is “of course”. We can hope for this. And we can take steps to make it happen.

This was not always the case.

Thomas Hardy knew that, and he wrote “Jude the Obscure” to lay out what happened in the agricultural era when a young man dared to dream big. It is one of the most depressing books I have ever read. Indeed, it is so depressing that one of Hardy’s readers wrote to him begging him not to write another book. In those days, one’s possibilities were limited. Hardy was a realist, and he shared his realistic view of what happens when one dares to step outside the life that was preordained for him or her.

Here is good old Tom, looking at us square in the face

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